Swogger had been arrested before on relatively minor charges,
but he now faced the prospect of a lengthy prison term. In his cell at Burley’s
Mini-Cassia Jail, Swogger told Rodriguez and Bonneville County
Prosecutor Tom Moss that in exchange for “considerations,”
he was willing to testify that Lanny Smith had confessed to the murders,
thereby supplying the prosecution with a piece of evidence it otherwise
couldn’t find.

The Bonneville County Sheriff’s Office had originally
arrested Lanny’s adopted brother, Jeffrey Lynn Smith, as
a suspect in the murder. Jeff, as he was commonly known, had
a lengthy history of violent crime, including rape, kidnapping, theft, and
several documented murder threats. The charges against Jeff were quickly
dropped, however, leaving the BCSO without a credible suspect.

Former Bonneville County DA -- and Federal Prosecutor -- Moss.

No physical evidence connected Lanny Smith to the murders,
and he had no known motive to murder a couple he regarded as friends. For
reasons that remain elusive, Rodriguez devised a bizarre theory that Lanny was
sexually attracted to elderly, heavy-set women like Mary, and that this
fixation eventually found expression in murderous jealousy after Mrs. Downard
rebuffed the younger man’s attentions.

The detective was able to recruit a neighbor named Beverly
Huffaker who was willing to share gossipy speculation under oath, and testify
that on the night of the murder Lanny was distraught over “something bad” that
had happened to the Downards. She was not a direct witness to the killing,
however, nor did Lanny make a confession to her. Huffaker’s recollection of an
anguished conversation on the night of the murder would later be impeached in
court. She claimed that it happened just after she and her son had returned to
Idaho from a trip to Nevada that actually happened six weeks prior to the
killings.

Roughly two years had passed by the time Swogger contacted
Det. Rodriguez. He had read about the Downard murders in the newspapers, and
discussed the case with both Lanny and his sister Viki.

“I took what he [Lanny] had told me and kinda turned it as
if he was confessing instead of someone who was confiding in me and was
scared,” Swogger would later explain. “He just kinda broke down because they
were accusing him.” Lanny was heartsick over what had been done to his friends,
and horrified by the prospect of a life sentence or perhaps the death penalty –
but he never confessed to his cellmate.

This didn’t trouble Rodriguez and his comrades, Swogger
recalled. For his part, the prisoner – accused of molesting his daughter – was
willing to say anything expected of him in exchange for promises of protection.Convicted child molesters are particularly
vulnerable targets in the Regime’s rape academy, and Swogger was both a “short
eyes”
and a snitch.

Ironically appropriate floor design at the Bonneville Co. Courthouse.

During Swogger’s subsequent visit with Detective Rodriguez and
deputy prosecutor Jay Rosenthal, they reconfigured his story by “basically
leading me through what they wanted me to say. I had several conversations from
the prison afterwards and I think one before they took me down to Idaho Falls
telling me not to worry [and] that you will be safe....”

“After I had originally talked to Victor [Rodriguez] and
[Tom] Moss, that is when I told them … I wanted to get out of it, and they said
no. If you back out now, we will prosecute you along with Lanny.” The detective
and county prosecutor warned Swogger that “if I didn’t go through with it
[perjuring himself on the witness stand], and not cooperating, and that I knew
about this capital murder case and basically told me that if I don’t go through
with it, I was through.”

This tactic -- "solving" a murder by using a combination of threats and promises to elicit perjury -- could be called the "Chris Tapp Interrogation Strategy," and it seems to be something of a Bonneville County law enforcement tradition. Unlike the hapless Chris Tapp, however, Swogger was able to tag someone else before the game ended, and there was enough residual decency in him to make him regret what he did.

“I was young and scared and if I knew then what I know now,
I would have said to find someone else and do what you need to do,” Swogger
disclosed in a lengthy September 12, 2011 statement to Elisa Massoth, the
attorney representing Lanny Smith in his ongoing federal appeal. Unlike his
jailhouse conversations with Det. Rodriguez and the prosecuting attorneys,
Swogger had nothing to gain by speaking with Massoth, apart from reclaiming a
measure of self-respect.

Swogger had returned to his native Oregon, remarried, and
was trying to build something akin to a normal life. As he pointed out to
Massoth, by speaking out he left himself vulnerable to potential reprisals.
There is no evidence that his subsequent conviction on drug
and theft charges was the result of official retaliation – nor
does it invalidate his admissions against interest in 2011.

A stolen life: Lanny Smith in court.

“I was trying to make things better for myself and not
considering someone else’s life,” Swogger
lamented.“I know what it is
like to be in a prison and having to live with that as a result of
self-centeredness and selfishness,” Swogger elaborated, acknowledging that he
had been punished for “the sexual assault on my daughter.” Now he was out of prison,
he wanted to make restitution to an innocent man whom he had helped put there
“for no apparent reason.”

“I cannot imagine Lanny and what he is going through [after]
being convicted for something he never did,” Swogger explained to Massoth. “I
really want my integrity all intact. I want some integrity in doing this.”

Among the major topics in that petition is the bizarre
solicitude shown by Rodriguez and the prosecution toward original murder
suspect Jeff Smith, a habitual violent criminal who terrorized nearly everybody
in his family -- including his ex-wives, the first of whom was forced to marry
him against her will at age 15 after he impregnated her through rape.

In a 2011 letter to Lanny Smith, Julie Woodall – formerly
Julie Smith – recalled an
incident from 1986 in which Lanny intervened to protect his brother from
beating, and perhaps killing, his ex-wife.

“I looked out the window and saw you running up to my front
door with your brother, Jeff, right behind you,” Woodall wrote. “I saw you
stand in front of my door when Jeff caught you, pushed you in front of my
window and began beating you viciously…. I will always remember … that you
tried your best to keep me from being hurt by your brother, all at the cost of
being assaulted yourself. I have always been touched by the fact that you were
willing to do this, even though you didn’t even know who I was.”

The man who took that beating is now in prison, convicted of
a double-murder most likely committed by the man who assaulted him – and who was
later called as a prosecution witness at the trial. Julie Woodall, the woman
who was saved from that beating, reported more than a half-dozen crimes of
violence committed against her by that witness. She was
not called to testify at Lanny’s trial.

Viki Smith, Lanny’s biological sister and sister to Jeff by
adoption, was likewise not called as a witness during Lanny’s trial, or during
his post-conviction hearing. In a
subsequent affidavit she testified that Jeff had been “sexually
inappropriate” with her as a teenager, and that he attempted to rape her when
she was 16 years old.

Lanny, by her account, was entirely unlike Jeff, a “kind,
caring, gentle and soft-spoken” young man who “would always come to the defense
of others.” This included, as mentioned previously, Lanny’s ex-sister-in-law,
Julie. Contrary to the prosecution’s insinuations about a deviant sexual
preoccupation with elderly women, Lanny had “crushes on my friends that were my
age,” Viki recounted.

Like nearly everybody else who knew Lanny and Jeff, Viki
Smith was perplexed by the BCSO’s determination to see Lanny prosecuted for the
Downard murders.

“Victor Rodriguez, the primary investigating detective in
Lanny’s case, hounded me and hounded me to make a statement,” Viki
declares in her affidavit. “Victor Rodriguez told me that Lanny
would go down for the Donward murders no matter what anyone said or did.”

Jeff Smith’s second ex-wife, Robbin, likewise described
Lanny as “the opposite of Jeff Smith.” As had happened with Jeff’s first wife,
Lanny became aware that Robbin was being abused and tried to help and protect
he when he could. This didn’t prevent Jeff from repeatedly threatening
to murder Robbin. This included several explicit threats made
during Lanny’s trial that should have led to charges of witness intimidation –
if Lanny’s defense attorney had the presence of mind to call Robbin as a
witness.

“In late June 1995, I witnessed an argument between Jeff and
Robyn [sic] Smith,” testified
former co-worker Heidi Libert in a 2004 affidavit. “Jeff
had asked Robyn for her paycheck, supposedly to pay the bills. Robyn knew that
he would not pay the bills, so she refused to give him the paycheck…. Jeff then
slapped her on the face and said `You will pay for this.’”

“I advised Robyn to call the police, but she told me that the police would not believe her,” Liebert continued
(emphasis added).

Concerned that her husband would kill her, Liebert urged
Robyn to divorce him “because of the abuse she was going through.” Eventually
Jeff learned of that advice and “came to my residence and threatened me. He
told me that `if you ever tell my wife [Robyn] to divorce me, I will kill you
and your husband.’”

Leibert’s husband confronted Smith and ordered him to leave.
Understandably concerned, they called the sheriff’s office to report the threat.

The only scrap of potentially useful physical evidence at the
murder scene was a shoeprint left on the dusty hardwood floor of the Downards’
master bedroom. Rodriguez photographed the print, but did so at an angle, and
neglected to place a ruler next to it in order to define its size.

After bungling what should have been a rudimentary crime scene investigation, Rodriguez sought out a
mathematician employed by the Idaho Nuclear Energy Laboratory, who devised an
exotic computer program that supposedly corrected the distortions in the image
and found that the print had been made with a size eight and a half “Footjoy”
tennis shoe.

According to the prosecution’s theory of the case, Jeff
Smith was admitting that he was the one who left the incriminating shoe print
at the scene of the murder.

A brief recess was called, during which Rodriguez held a
brief, furtive conference with Jeff. When the hearing resumed, Bonneville County
Prosecutor Tom Moss asked four additional questions about Jeff Smith’s shoes –
and in reply to each of those questions, Smith invoked the Fifth Amendment.

If the State’s expert witness was correct, Jeff Smith had
identified himself as the murderer. Yet the BCSO and the Bonneville County
Prosecutor’s Office remained perversely determined to prosecute Jeff’s mentally
challenged and apparently benevolent adopted brother for the crime.

James Swogger knew the participants in what was a conspiracy
to obstruct justice by protecting a murderer and framing an innocent man. He
had played a key role in that conspiracy himself. In his 2011 statement to
Elisa Massoth, Swogger said that the attitude of his co-conspirators was, “We
found somebody, let’s convict him and get it over with.”

To his credit, Swogger – notwithstanding his admitted acts
of criminal indecency – is trying to make amends for his crimes against Lanny
Smith. Tragically, neither retired Detective Rodriguez, nor his former colleagues
in Bonneville County, can summon the strength of character displayed by an admitted
child molester.

Listen to Carol Dodge, mother of Idaho Falls murder victim Angie Dodge, describe how the IFPD has impeded her efforts to find the killer -- on this week's Freedom Zealot Podcast:

1 comment:

Anonymous
said...

I believe the court house floor design is a Native American (as odd as it may seem) sign for peace. They appear throughout the West. Originally the symbol (a "swastika") first appeared in India. At least that is my understanding.